Fellow Nigerians,

for the past 18 or so months, I have watched with interest as the latest management fad to catch on with Nigerians; ‘Project Management’ has grown in acceptance, and why not? In the West where this latest management concept emerged, its practice has met with resounding success for the most part and has helped many organizations whether in the private and public sectors, large and small, to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in realizing corporate (business) objectives .

For the sake of my dear brothers and sisters who are not (very) familiar with this new management concept; I shall provide some quick definitions;

1. What is a Project? A group of activities needed to create a new product or service, or bring about change within clearly defined constraints of Time, Budget and Quality.

Examples; the Olympics, World Cup, Wedding, Building a house, Assembling an oil rig, Launching a new product, Culture Change,  etc.

2. Who is a Project Manager? The individual responsible for managing the entire process in (1) above;

3. What is Project Management? Project Management is the planning, co-ordination and control of activities and resources to meet (a) defined objective(s) within a given timeframe.

Professionals with Project Management skills and qualifications differ from your average everyday MBA holder in that while the MBA holder is well schooled in the art of Strategy (Talking), the same cannot totally be said with respect to the art of Delivery (Doing). This is where the strength of the Project Management Professional is evident as he is schooled both in the art and skill of Strategy and Delivery; he talks and then does. Both skills must be combined in order to achieve success in the achievement of corporate objectives, whether it is from launching a new banking product to drive up revenue and positively affect the bottom line, or to construction of an offshore drilling platform.

Note that the skill is transferable. This means that a project manager is capable of operating in any environment, whether it is Oil and Gas, I.T., Entertainment, Events Management, Consulting and even Banking.

People with the right Project Management skills and certifications command high premiums in the labour market for obvious reasons; they have been empowered with the right tools, skill set and managerial knowhow to immediately begin to add value once they are (re)absorbed into (new) organizations.

Likewise, Project Management Training and Certification also comes at a premium, naturally because as mentioned above, it is a premium skill and employers who are aware both of successes achieved by certified possessors of this skill, and organizations who have employed it successfully, are not alien to paying a premium over and above what the traditional MBA holder is worth.  As a matter of fact, going by Western standards, entry level Certified Project Professionals command salaries of up to $400 per day.

As an indicator of it’s acceptance locally in Nigeria, organizations such as ZAIN, MTN, BAT, and even AG Leventis have begun the use of the de facto UK Government Project Management Standard; ‘PRINCE2’ , for use in the governance and delivery of their projects. I for one have personally seen the ZAIN in house PRINCE2 training slides and can attest without a doubt in my mind that ZAIN recognizes this qualification.

Job seekers take note!

I will speak more on PRINCE2 (PRojects IN Controlled Environments) in a subsequent post as promoting the benefits of Project Management Training and Certification is not the primary purpose of this post.

Instead, I write to exercise my civic responsibility first as a Nigerian and as a professional owing a duty of care to the public, moreso because I am desirous of playing as strong a role as possible in ensuring that Nigeria and Nigerians are lifted out of the doldrums of underdevelopment and inefficiency; where colossal sums of money are wasted on projects that are poorly defined and improperly managed with the resultant dismal realization of benefits, both in the public and private sectors.

Regularly, in the newspapers, particularly the one whose conscience is nurtured by truth, you will find a proliferation of organizations advertising Project Management Training and Certification courses.

One in particular, adopts a twin strategy of promoting the value of British qualifications and presenting itself as an accredited academic institution based in the United Kingdom.  For many Nigerians who have taken the course with them (myself inclusive), the experience has been quite ugly. For one, for an organization that preaches and teaches project Management, (with its emphasis on highly organized and effectively managed work), in the delivery of their service, this is absent.

I can recall that in 2007 when I took the course with them, the ‘Pho-ne’ speaking head of the organization did not arrive to deliver the training which should have begun by 9am until around 11am.  In fact that day, matters got worse as the trainer made an excuse of not being used to living in Africa and so had come down with malaria. To cut a long story short, the training did not hold that weekend and was instead postponed till the next amidst series of strong complaints from participants who had paid over one hundred thousand naira each to attend the course. We all complained in vain.

Following that, about halfway through the first day’s training of the concluding weekend of the two weekend course, the head trainer hands over to a fellow participant of the course (who had been sitting with us all along) to conclude the training. Immediately bells started going off in my head. I thought to myself, this can’t be right. How can a representative of an academic institution just handover responsibility for concluding training in a specialized course in such an unceremonious manner to a participant who has not even concluded that very same course in the first place, talk less of receiving extensive and proper facilitator training?

What was worse was that the guy could not teach properly and at the end I felt I had been ripped off especially on the very last day of the course when the guy could not teach us effectively, how to use the Microsoft Projects software. I am aware that we were not the only ones to suffer this fate as previous and post participants of the course have had similar experiences.

It appears that taking previous participants of the course (regardless of relevant experience and/or appropriate certification) and putting them in front of fresh ones who haven’t the slightest idea, is the standard practice of this organization. In my opinion, the effect is that participants do not get full value for money, as they have paid for and deserve better.

I mean, you can correct me if I’m wrong oh, but reasoning logically, when you pay such an amount for a training, what you are paying for is the transfer of knowledge and experience from the facilitator to your person, so that hopefully, you can add value to yourself and to your organization when you get back, not for some person to stand in front of you and read slides and not be able to bring the theory to life with appropriate examples from relevant, real life experiences that all , or at least most, can identify with. With the exception of one or two facilitators, this has been the case.

As if that isn’t bad enough, recently I attended an advertised interaction between management of the organization and past/present participants of the course as an attempt to resolve several outstanding complaints. In a manner that has become characteristic, the ‘oga’ of the organization cleverly steered attendees away from asking pertinent questions and when they did, straight answers were never provided.

The next thing I know, the oga is announcing to us that the name of the (academic) organization is changing, but that it was the choice of participants to decide in which of the names they would want their certificates printed.   Someone immediately raised concerns about the effect of this change with employers and even embassies were these certificates have and would be presented. How can one so called academic institution be issuing certificates in two different names? 

I have never known any college or university to do that. The University of Lagos will not ask graduands if they would prefer their certificates to read ‘University of Lagos’ or ‘Unilag’, they would just issue you a certificate and if for some reason, the university’s name is changed as was the case with OAU, then graduates of the institution after the fact would strictly hold certificates in this new name and not the former. Wonders shall never end!

Only recently (Tuesday 27, Jan, 2009) again, I saw an advert by the same organisation in the papers regarding an MBA qualification in Project Management  being issued from a University in the country where Obama currently rules. What struck me is that the name of the awarding University is not even mentioned in the advert and this has raised my suspicion that this may just be another ploy to rip off unsuspecting Nigerians who are desirous of acquiring foreign qualifications. Normally, the name of the University should be the attraction, I wonder why they have kept silent on this.

I am not saying conclusively that the advert is fraudulent oh, but I advise that whoever is interested in attending should investigate properly. Ask direct questions; what is the name of the University? Who will the facilitators be? What are their qualifications? Use google search!!!

Confirm accreditation of the university, otherwise you will end up with a valueless certificate.

There is much more to be said but I feel that the picture is sufficiently clear by now. The onus is on Nigerians to carefully investigate any organization that they wish to take a course with properly before making payment as once that payment has been made, you are at the mercy of the organization.

To be forewarned is to be ………   

God Bless You

God Bless Nairaland

God Bless Nigeria.

Thank you.

Great POST here brother!!!
Perfect representation of truth and Sarah's Trick I Suspect,

So you also fell for it, I'm glad that you truly know Project Management and will like to work with you.
Let's have a chat,
Perhaps I might have met you before, some of those remarks ring a bell,

ciao

Men! I so applaud you on this write up! I most definitely would love to meet you. And if your write up is not copy right protected, I would like to take an excerpt from it.

Hello Chizzy,

thank you for your response. Apologies for not getting back to you sooner, I have been bogged down with work.

Okay, so you want to talk/meet? Kindly send your contact details to pmcrusaders@yahoo.co.uk. Please do not ommit to give an indication of the nature of discussions you would like to have.

Before I give my permission to you to reproduce excerpts of my post, kindly let me know exactly how you plan to use it and where. Other than that, in the meantime, please feel free to forward to as many people as possible

God bless you

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Hi,pmcrusader,nice posting there.Pls I need your advice on PM course.I have been nursing the interest of attending the PM training for a long time but my fear is that I dont really know the benefit I stand to gain with this programme interms of getting a good job with good package,gettind trained by a reputable organization.Pls, help me out I need orientation on this programme b4 investing my money.
N.B: I intend getting trained by PROJECT MANAGEMENT ACADEMY.Are they reliable?thanks and regards.